Opening Day – Saturday, March 20th, 4-8PM: RSVP for a 1-hour time slot HERE. Due to our limited capacity, timed entry reservations are required to attend the opening reception. Please sign up for only one time slot, and your arrival to the gallery must be within the hour you have selected. Please read our COVID Courtesy Code prior to your visit
After the opening day, the gallery will be open regular hours, Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6PM, and reservations will not be required.
Drawing from his experience in academia and critical discourse, jc lenochan’s work scrutinizes the way that history is taught, which narratives are given voice, and which ones are suppressed. In UNDOING WHITE MESS, lenochan employs a process of deconstructing objects and de-circulating institutional relics, posing a series of questions about the acquisition of knowledge. In this body of work, he reconfigures everyday commodities, such as books, furniture, and tools in order to rethink the way that they can be understood, to open up their potential meanings, and to initiate art’s transformative function. Through investigative research, drawing, riffs on traditional sculpture, and performance based installations, lenochan’s interests engulf ideas of re-appropriation of historical imagery and misrepresented educational lessons that possess an entrenched colonial mentality.
This work delves deeply to expose and confront cultural bias, perceptions of otherness, and racial fabrications. A mural sized chalkboard drawing depicts a “de-racing machine,” which resembles an industrial factory for erasing racial perceptions. Sculptures made of books that explore the history and politics of race and class in this country are cemented shut. Growing out of this sculptural work is a new series of text paintings with block letters embossed into cement. The embedded messages confront the systems that have been built and continue to depend on white privilege. By challenging assumptions and recombining them with personal/historical narratives, lenochan’s work embodies Socratic methods of questioning and humor as a post-colonial pedagogical strategy for dismantling the manipulative perspectives of the dominant ideology. The artist asks, “What role has pedagogy played in shaping history and our current social condition or cultural climate?” In this way, lenochan continually engages the possibilities of critical discourse to rethink the canon of art history in order to create a new way of seeing the world as a new human in undoing whiteness.
UPCOMING PROGRAMS
Artist Talks – Sunday, April 18, 3–4:30 PM. More details coming soon.
Image above: jc lenochan, Get smart again, 2021, mixed media, 6” x 14” x 5”. Courtesy of the artist.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
